SB 1070 could clog up courts, experts warn

Cases could triple fast with no extra staffing

by J. Craig Anderson - Jun. 10, 2010 12:00 AMArizona Business Gazette

Arizona's impending crackdown on illegal immigrants has the potential to overwhelm the state's court system with criminal and civil cases once enforcement begins, a group of Arizona immigration attorneys said.

They warned that, without accompanying immigration reform to make the rules more practical and practicable, enforcement of SB-1070 could triple the number of cases almost overnight, with no additional court staffing or funds to accommodate them.

In addition, the law's enactment would place individual members of law enforcement in the precarious position of being vulnerable to lawsuits regardless of how strictly or leniently they applied the new rules, the lawyers said.

The controversial new law was signed April 23 by Gov. Jan Brewer and is scheduled to take effect July 28.

But the law already faces a number of legal challenges even before it has taken effect.

Immigration will be one of the key issues reviewed at the State Bar of Arizona's 2010 convention during "Immigration and Criminal Law Hot Topics," a seminar offered Friday for the attending lawyers and judges.

It is one of more than 45 seminars available for the more than 1,500 participants attending the three-day convention through Friday at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel and Spa.

Two immigration-law attorneys scheduled to participate in the forum said SB 1070's implementation will create the legal-system equivalent of stepping into a minefield.

It could take years' worth of case law, following complaints and challenges, to fine-tune some of the law's more ambiguous and legally onerous provisions, said Maria V. Jones, chairwoman of the Bar's Immigration Law Section and owner of the Law Offices of Maria V. Jones in Phoenix.

Kara Hartzler, an immigration attorney based in Florence scheduled to speak at Friday's event, said an unusual provision of the law that allows residents to sue their local government for not enforcing it strictly enough could place law-enforcement officials in a no-win situation.

If police officers are too aggressive about detaining people who lack proof of citizenship, as they would be authorized to do, it's inevitable that they would end up arresting and holding a number of U.S. citizens, which Hartzler said is bound to generate wrongful-arrest lawsuits.

If they are too careful about whom they detain, she said, police could open themselves up to lawsuits claiming they failed to adequately enforce the new law.

"I don't envy them at all," said Hartzler, director of the Florence Immigration and Refugee Project.

Jones, who emigrated from Russia, said she does not favor amnesty for illegal immigrants but thinks existing rules discourage many from following the legally sanctioned process toward legal status or U.S. citizenship.

For one, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has an 18-year backlog of applications to process, she said.

Even without the new law, Jones said, penalties for non-residents who break the rules are impractical and make it virtually impossible for many would-be citizens to immigrate legally.

For instance, federal law states that any non-citizen caught lying about his or her legal status after 1996 while attempting to cross into the U.S. is barred from legal naturalization - for life.